The development of cleansing products (including, without limitation, liquid hand soaps, body washes, shampoos, 2-in-1 shampoos, bath washes, hair conditioners, facial cleansers, and the like) has long been driven by the challenge of providing a combination of performance properties such as good foaming, good cleansing, good rinsing, enhanced mildness, and improved skin feel. Often the addition of a component to a cleansing composition formulation may enhance one property to the detriment of another desired property of the composition. For example, a composition may enhance skin conditioning by incorporating emollients at the expense of foaming. Therefore, those in the relevant art have been seeking new formulations to help achieve the balance of desirable performance properties.
Recently, there has been a trend in personal care cleansing products to develop products that are mild and comprise ingredients that are naturally derived rather than synthetic. Further, there are growing concerns over the use of alkanolamides in personal care products, due to possible formation of nitrosamines. There is also an increasing desire to move away from ethylene oxide/propylene oxide (EO/PO) containing ingredients in personal care products because of the possibility of residual 1,4-dioxane being present from the processing to make the EO/PO component. Formulating liquid cleansing compositions to satisfy the trends and concerns of the industry has proved to be challenging.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a liquid cleansing formulation that provides low skin irritation, low skin drying, good cleansing ability, good foaming, and good rinsability characteristics/properties, while minimizing the use of alkanolamides and EO/PO containing components. There also remains a need for a cleansing formulation that utilizes naturally derived components that can provide multi-functional properties, thereby obtaining a desired balance of properties with fewer components, which result in lower costs of production.